In this excerpt from Adobe Flash Professional CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release), learn how to use Flash Professional to change almost any aspect of an object—position, color, transparency, size, rotation, and more—over time. Motion tweening is the basic technique of creating animation with symbol instances.

Note: This excerpt does not include the lesson files. The lesson files are available with purchase of the book.

This lesson will take approximately 2 hours to complete. If needed, remove the previous lesson folder from your hard drive and copy the Lesson04 folder onto it. Download the project files for this lesson from the Lesson & Update Files tab on your Account page at www.peachpit.com and store them on your computer in a convenient location, as described in the Getting Started section of this book. Your Account page is also where you’ll find any updates to the lessons or to the lesson files. Look on the Lesson & Update Files tab to access the most current content.

Use Flash Professional to change almost any aspect of an object—position, color, transparency, size, rotation, and more—over time. Motion tweening is the basic technique of creating animation with symbol instances.

Getting Started

Start by viewing the finished movie file to see the animated title page that you’ll create in this lesson.

Double-click the 04End.html file in the Lesson04/04End folder to play the animation in a browser.

The project is an animated splash page for an imaginary soon-to-be-released motion picture. In this lesson, you’ll use motion tweens to animate several components on the page: the cityscape, the main actors, several old-fashioned cars, and the main title.

NOTE

If you have not already downloaded the project files for this lesson to your computer from your Account page, make sure to do so now. See Getting Started at the beginning of the book.

Close the 04End.html file.

Double-click the 04Start.fla file in the Lesson04/04Start folder to open the initial project file in Flash. This file is an ActionScript 3.0 document that is partially completed and already contains many of the graphic elements imported into the Library for you to use.

From the view options above the Stage, choose Fit in Window, or View > Magnification > Fit in Window, so that you can see the entire Stage on your computer screen.

Choose File > Save As. Name the file 04_workingcopy.fla, and save it in the 04Start folder.

Saving a working copy ensures that the original start file will be available if you want to start over.